


hymn for the fallen

by badlifechoices123



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Multi, Post-Time Skip, background sylvix, faerghus boys tryin to help out, no beta we die like Glenn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:41:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badlifechoices123/pseuds/badlifechoices123
Summary: Ingrid faces her former classmate - and has to chose whether to face her as a knight or a lover.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 13
Kudos: 61





	hymn for the fallen

**Author's Note:**

> was robbed of ingrid/dorothea A+ support, so i wrote...something sad.

Ingrid spotted Sylvain sprawled out on the grass, sprawled under the sun. She sat close to him, cross-legged and toyed with the messed up locks of his hair.  
  
“Hey there,” he said. Always the same greeting. This was hers. He beamed at her, patted her cheek because he always does.  
  
“You’re looking relaxed for someone whose marching to Enbarr tomorrow.” She said, combing through his hair with her fingers.  
  
He enjoyed it, lifting his head to place it on her lap. “Just trying to enjoy things while I’m still alive.”

“You don't ever change, do you.”

“I like being the one thing constant in this hellhole of a world.” He grinned, all teeth and genuine happiness. This was the smile he didn't like to show to women who he thought he could woo. Ingrid didn't tell him that he looked more charming like this.

She couldn't help but smile too, but she knew he could recognize the bitterness behind it when his eyes sharpened and his mouth pressed into a straight line. His hand cupped her cheek. Steady.

“Don’t ever change, Sylvain.” She said, leaning into his palm.

“Not even my womanizing ways?” He wiggled his eyebrows. He crossed his hands over his chest and they kept like that for a while, Ingrid’s fingers in his hair, Sylvain’s head snug on her lap. They watched the sun begin to set. A cat passed by them. The birds above soared. The trees swayed and their leaves danced in the wind.

“I’m scared, Sylvain.”

He took one of her hands, pulled it to his chest. “I know.”

“I…” green eyes flashed in her mind’s eye. Her heart is a traitor and her mind is a conspirator against her. “I’m going to have to face her…”

Sylvain twined his fingers into hers. His hands were rough but warm. Steady and _there_. “You don't have to,” he whispered in that voice she has only heard him use on Felix. “We can position you so that you won’t face her.”

“No.” She was quick to refute. “I will. I will not falter. I will face her because…” her voice cracked, another traitor, another conspirator against her will. “That’s what a knight would do.”

“Have you loved her as a knight?” Sylvain asked abruptly.

“I…”

“Exactly. You don’t love her as a knight. You love her as Ingrid. So if you will face her, you will face her as Ingrid. Not as a knight of Faerghus but as Dorothea’s lover.”

At the sound of her name, Ingrid gasped, throat clutching for breath like a drowning sailor. How traitorous her body was, how her tears conspired against her. She sobbed, clutching onto Sylvain’s shirtfront, fists crumbling the fabric as his hands came to her face, stroking ever so gently, whispering to her “Let it out, Ingrid, it’s okay…”

“It’s not okay!” she shouted at him, unfairly, grabbing onto him as if he would disappear if she didn't hold strong enough.

Her vision blurry, her chest tight, and her ears ringing.

“Hey, hey. Easy there. Breathe, Ingrid, breathe with me.” She didn't feel when Sylvain had gone from her lap, but she did feel when he pulled her into his, his arms wound around her, holding her close and secure. Chest to chest, she tried to match her errant breaths to his calmer ones and by time she did calm down. She pressed her snotty, clammy face into his shoulder, and said “it’s not okay…” softer than the first time.

“I know. It will never be.”

She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt at his back. With an arm supporting her on her hips, he hoisted her to sit more comfortably on his lap and started to rub circles on her back, rhythmically. The sun was gone by now.

“She used to like my hair.” She said, placing her cheek on his chest and staring straight ahead.

He buried his face in her hair. “It’s beautiful.”

“I liked her hair too.”

“Hmm.”

“Her eyes.”

He nodded.

“…her voice.”

When Ingrid next woke, she found herself warm. She also found herself in her nightclothes, tucked in bed, her hair undone. The sun had peeked from slits in the curtains, and she felt the dawning realization that the morning of their march to Enbarr has come, and she is not prepared. She will never be prepared, not for this.

*

Five years ago, when the professor had cut open the sky and jumped out of a chasm, Ingrid thought to herself – if there was ever someone as strong as the goddess, it would be the one who leaped out of a seam in the sky, wielding the Sword of the Creator as if it was forged for them.

Five years ago, when Dorothea had danced and danced, agonizingly bright in the ballroom, Ingrid thought to herself – if there was ever someone as beautiful as the goddess, it would be the one who wrapped their thorns around her heart, tantalizing and teasing, as if her heart had pledged itself for them.

Ingrid observed her friends and the soldiers of Faerghus build the camps. She should’ve been with them – to help her fellow countrymen, her friends. She was a knight after all. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. There was no feeling in her limbs. No blood coursing through her veins. Sapped of her strength, she sat on the ground, her back to a tree trunk.

The war wasn't over yet – and Ingrid doubted it will ever be over. It will never stop, not after they have slain all their former classmates, not after they defeat Edelgard, and not even after they kill their loved ones.

She scoffed – a sound unfitting for a knight. But a knight protects their loved ones, and what has Ingrid done?

She had soared the skies over the opera house. She had met Dorothea with her battalion of Pegasus Knights and had brought Luin down on them like death from the sky. Now that she thought of it clearly, she wondered how vision-impaired she was, her tears a veil between her and her love. And she remembered, so vividly, that divine voice – singing to her for the last time.

_“Alas, here comes my knight in shining armor.”_

After that, her memories halted. As though someone had shut the curtains while the last act while still running. From behind the scenes, she can still remember – though uncertainly – Felix’s voice, screaming with all the power in his lungs, and him scolding her, over and over again.

Ingrid twisted the blood-stained ring on her finger. She assumed that she must have taken it off of Dorothea’s hand before… before she was hit. She didn't remember how or who attacked her, but the wound was on her left shoulder, eerily close to her neck. She probably should’ve been dead, if not for Felix, and Mercedes, who was by her bedside when she woke.

And later… she left the tent. And came to sit. She hadn’t spoken to anyone, couldn't even look at them. A heavy curtain lay on her mind, on her heart. It blocked everything out, and she decided to let it. There was no point in lifting the curtains if the diva was never going to come on the stage again.

She must have dozed off, being exhausted. The next moment a hand seized her right shoulder, shaking her insistently.

“Hey. Wake up. Get in a tent, you look pitiful.”

But Ingrid wasn't listening. She had her eyes on the arm that continued to shake her, scarred strangely – bulging dark veins, skin marred and red. She recognized those scars, on the arms of those who overcast Thoron.

“…Thea?” she whispered. Dorothea’s arms looked like that on the day she died, scars peeking from under dress sleeve. Like thorns, Ingrid thought distantly.

“Ingrid! Get a grip on yourself!”

She looked up. Dark hair, sharp eyes. A perpetual scowl, a familiar face. Something welled up in her throat, making it so difficult to breathe. An old love, one she could never forget. _Glenn_ …

The grip on her shoulder tightened to the point of sudden, sharp pain. She howled, her vision clearing, and when she saw Felix’s face – shock, and underneath that reserve – hurt, the pain in her shoulders was nothing like the pain in her chest. She realized that she had called that name aloud.

*

Between the four childhood friends, it was a known fact that Felix was the crybaby. What was probably thought of but never addressed was the fact that Ingrid was as much as a crybaby as Felix was – but she always held it in until she could bawl her eyes out when no one was watching.

Ha. What a joke, there was always _someone_ watching. Always the one she never wanted to see her cry. _But knights are supposed to help people, that’s what I am_ – he’d try to convince her once she’d spotted him.

Glenn had long gone from this world. The knight she had lost in the first act, always coming back as a dream, a fleeting memory of warmth and young love. Even with Dorothea’s bloodied ring on her, she thought of him. What a cowardly heart, she had. Unworthy of a knight. Felix had told her that, once.

 _Go find a husband_ , he had said right after. She still remembers the anger she felt back when he first said it. Unfulfilled anger – at Felix, at her dreams of a knighthood, at Glenn. It was a wave of anger she felt in her blood, made her knees shake and her blood boil. The second time Felix told her to go find a husband, she had said that she did and watched his face twist in confusion until she calmly said _Sylvain will be my husband_ , and then jealousy took hold him, his eyes sharpening, his fists clenching, and his shoulders drawing tense. Of course, because he is Felix Hugo Fraldarius, he couldn't say anything but _That’s the worst choice you could ever make,_ and then leave, stomping his way out.

She had told Felix that Glenn died protecting what he loved. The more she thought of knighthood, and Glenn, and the tangled knots connecting knighthood and Glenn to herself, she realized she had made a mistake. She voiced this to Dimitri, back when she felt that he might have been the one who would understand her the most. She had told him that Glenn died in regret, and from there on she carried that belief with her, as she mourned him, for years and years.

Ingrid stood up, ignoring her body’s painful protests. On her way to the tents, she found a group of soldiers gathered by the fire and asked where could she find Gautier’s tent. She paid no attention to the coy whispers behind her as she followed the pointed direction. She parted the tent flap, peered into the dark, a single dim lamplight by the bedrolls. There were two bodies huddled together in a single roll, but she didn't care. She walked to them and watched as Felix lifted his head and gasped softly. Sylvain threw the blanket off and could barely brace himself before Ingrid threw herself at them, both. She clutched at them, an arm around Felix’s neck and the other around Sylvain’s, the rest of her awkwardly half sprawled over both her friends and she threatened “Don’t you two ever _think_ of dying.”

“We’re not counting on it,” Sylvain whispered, his breath tickling her ear.

Felix grunted. He nuzzled Ingrid’s hair and threw an arm around her waist, dragging her close. Close enough to convey that he has forgiven her, but she owed him an apology, still.

“I will haunt you if you did.”

“Generally the ones who are dead are the ones who haunt, Ingrid,” Sylvain sat up, pulling Ingrid into his lap as he did before. She let him maneuver her and refrained from commenting on Felix, who grabbed her legs and settled them on his lap, his hands on her knees protectively.

“I will _haunt_ you,” she said with more intended malice, but with her voice faltering, snot in her nose, she couldn't administer the desired effect.

“I think… we don’t need more haunting…”

The three of them turned to the voice that sounded from the tent’s opening. Dimitri stood in his nightclothes, hair pulled back, with a timid smile on his face. Only when seeing him did Ingrid realize that she must look like a mess, her braids undone, strands falling wayward over her face. She felt Felix tense under her legs, fighting the urge to bolt out of the tent, but the one he wanted to run from was there, standing at the opening.

Sylvain, ever the ice-breaker, gestured on the bedroll. “Just in time, Dimitri. Come, come.”

Dimitri visibly glowed. He walked towards them and sat gingerly in front of Ingrid. He placed a hand gently on her back and met her eyes as he whispered, “I’m glad you’re looking better. When I heard of how Felix carried you–”

Felix growled, absent-mindedly clutching Ingrid’s legs closer to himself, “She absolutely doesn't have to hear _that_.”

“No,” Sylvain chuckled, shaking them both, “she _absolutely_ does.”

Ingrid let herself smile. At her boys, however stupid they are, however steadfast and gentle they are. They were here, and Ingrid needed that. She would protect them – and live for them, not as a knight, but as Ingrid.

Because they love her as Ingrid.

And when she next wakes, her head tucked under Felix’s chin, his hair in her nose, in her eyes, with Sylvain’s arm weighing as much as ten horses wrapped around her waist, and Dimitri curled around him, she will still mourn those she had lost.

But it will be okay because those she hadn’t lost are still there for her.

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this while listening to the edge of dawn on loop, making myself sadder


End file.
